Human induced development activities are introduced with insufficient attention to their consequences for our living environment, even in cases where environmental assessments have been carried out. This apparent lack of attention to biodiversity in environmental assessment is rooted in the difficulties we have in adequately addressing biodiversity within the scope, time frame and budget allocated for assessments. This book provides a conceptual background and practical approaches to overc...

The book is intended to guide you through the most amazing and incredible journey called Motherhood from a dentist’s perspective, an area often ignored. Being a mother is not an easy job, but definitely the best job anyone could ever have. We take you through this beautiful journey, focusing on the areas of child development often ignored.

Human beings and industrial-based society are changing the composition of our planet’s atmosphere and causing it to warm at an unnatural and oftentimes astonishingly rapid rate. Much of that warmth is being absorbed by water, which as a result is moving through the global hydrological cycle faster and in unprecedented ways. A warmer atmosphere carries more water vapour, which means that as temperatures continue to rise, storms will become more intense, last longer and cause more damage to ...

At Copenhagen in December 2009, the international community agreed to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change. However climate scientists agree that current national emissions targets collectively will still not achieve this goal. Instead, the ‘ambition gap’ between climate science and climate policy is likely to lead to average global warming of around four degrees Celsius by or before 2100. If a ‘Four Degree World’ is t...

It is vitally important for businesses to have a holistic understanding of the many issues surrounding and shaping sustainability, from competitors to government and political factors, to economics and ecological science. This integrated textbook for MBA and senior-level undergraduates offers a comprehensive overview of the issues of sustainability as they relate to business and influence corporate strategy. It also features a wide range of cases and an extensive discussion of tools to inc...

Environmental governance encompasses our relations to nature, spanning institutions and policies in fields such as biodiversity loss, climate change, land use and pollution. This book offers tools for the study of environmental conflicts, analyzes the current status of environmental policies and discusses why we are so far from resolving many of the issues we face. It also offers alternative directions for future environmental governance.Key features include:an interd...

Ecosystem Services: Global Issues, Local Practices covers scientific input, socioeconomic considerations, and governance issues on ecosystem services. This book provides hands-on transdisciplinary reflections by administrators and sector representatives involved in the ecosystem service community. Ecosystem Services develops shared approaches and scientific methods to achieve knowledge-based sustainable planning and management of ecosystem services. Professionals engaged in ecosystem servi...

Human well-being relies critically on ecosystem services provided by nature. Examples include water and air quality regulation, nutrient cycling and decomposition, plant pollination and flood control, all of which are dependent on biodiversity. They are predominantly public goods with limited or no markets and do not command any price in the conventional economic system, so their loss is often not detected and continues unaddressed and unabated. This in turn not only impacts human well-bei...

A comprehensive introduction to green criminology, this book is a discussion of the relationship between mainstream criminal justice and green crimes.Focused on environmental harm within the context of criminal justice this book takes a global perspective andIntroduces students to different theoretical perspectives in green criminologyLooks at the victims of environmental crime throughoutCovers topics such as; wildlife crimes, animal abuse, the cau...

This book presents a framework, the Urban Risk Assessment, for assessing disaster and climate risk in cities which is intended to assist in decision-making, urban planning, and designing risk management programs. The approach seeks to strengthen coherence and consensus within and across cities in understanding and planning for risk from natural disasters and climate change. The target audience for this book includes policy makers, urban practitioners and technical staff, and international org...

Policy and management decisions are often made on financial grounds. However, the economic value of the benefits that people derive from ecosystems, that is, ecosystem services, may not be fully recognised and hence ecosystem considerations may not be incorporated adequately into decision-making processes. This is particularly true for regulating services, the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, the valuation of which requires an interdisciplinary approach. In ess...

The idea that nature provides services to people is one of the most powerful concepts to have emerged over the last two decades. It is shaping our understanding of the role that biodiverse ecosystems play in the environment and their benefits for humankind. As a result, there is a growing interest in operational and methodological issues surrounding ecosystem services amongst environmental managers, and many institutions are now developing teaching programmes to equip the next generation w...